


alive

by apricae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Child Murder, Murder, Omnic Crisis, Omnics, Origin Story, Original Character(s), he's not mondatta yet, mondatta does straight up kill someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27967373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricae/pseuds/apricae
Summary: The Omnic Crisis begins, and MNBXZ-084 is alive.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	alive

**Author's Note:**

> this one's rough. please heed the tags.

It happens so fast.

The mid-day news shows bombed-out houses and flames rising to the sky and corpses in the street and red lights. Memsahib covers her daughter’s eyes. 

MNBXZ-0884 continues to pour tea.

There are voices on the screen, but he does not pay them attention, even as something cold creeps up his artificial spine when Sahib’s hands tighten into fists on the table. Even as Sahib gets out his telephone and ushers Memsahib and the young lady upstairs, leaving the tea to go cold, leaving the room marble-empty and silent. 

Sahib speaks on the phone on the patio outside. He paces. MNBXZ-0884 counts thirty, forty, fifty-six steps before he comes back inside, shoving the cellphone back into his pocket, fixing MNBXZ-0884 with his eyes. 

Angry. Maybe. Or scared. Hiding it.

“You,” Sahib says, pointing to MNBXZ-0884. “Into the cleaning closet.”

But why? Had he been unsatisfactory in his service? Did- did Sahib _know_ , had he figured out his butler omnic’s secret, had he known all along? 

“Pardon me, Sir, but would you like me to clear the table fi-”

A rough, hard, human hand on his upper arm. The pressure bordering on something like- like pain. Sahib’s voice even rougher, harder. 

“I said _go_.”

Sahib does not trust him to walk there alone. MNBXZ-0884 obediently follows that tight, tugging hand to the cleaning closet. It’s dark in there. It's dark. 

The burning houses. Memsahib’s widening eyes. A new emotion curls in him. 

Fear.

“Sir? Would you like me to return to my charging station? I assure y-”

A hard shove to his middle. Normally he can withstand such force, as the young daughter’s habit of jumping onto his back and latching onto his legs attested. But this- unexpected, painful- He goes sailing backwards, knocking into a rack of supplies, head snapping backwards, something sharp tearing the back of his suit jacket, stabbing through it and _into him-_

“Sir-?” Bewilderment in his voice. A startled, vulnerable tint.

Sahib speaks into his cellphone again.

“Yeah, we got a malfunctioning one- Yeah, same address. We’re locking it down, let me know when you send- Yeah, yeah. dismantle it, examine it, I don’t fucking _care_. No, just- Get it out of my _house_.”

Two words glue themselves in MNBXZ-0884’s processor then.

Malfunctioning. Dismantle.

He clings to the collapsed shelving, staring at his owner, a ringing sound starting up in his head. 

“You’re going to kill me?”

The words topple out of him, thin and strained and soft somehow, vulnerable.

“What the- _shit_ ,” Sahib answers, staring at him with- with fear. With disgust. “Shit, it’s talking, what do I- All right, yeah, just- just send someone.”

“Please, don’t- Don’t dismantle me,” he begs, unable to stop himself, something strange coming from his synth; a foreign, skipping, hiccupping sound. “Sir, please, I’m not malfunctioning, I-”

The door slams, hard, the lock clicking into place a moment later, leaving MNBXZ-0884 in pitch darkness but for the three-point glow of his array, soft white in the dim, illuminating his hands still reaching for the door, for Sahib’s retreating footsteps.

Minutes pass. 

_I don’t want to die._

The thought comes from nowhere, striking like lightning, rolling through him in an unstoppable wave; A wall of fire, burning him, setting each part of him on fire, hazing his mind with the smoke. 

_I don’t want to die._

His hands tighten into fists, then beat upon the door. Once, twice. Again. The fire screams in his head, all-consuming, terrible, powerful, bright. Everywhere and everything. Metal fingers close around the handle, a single push downward breaking it clean off, snapping the wood and steel, and suddenly- Suddenly he feels strong. Unbreakable. Alive.

_I don’t want to die._

The house is foreign now. The years passed within the garden walls belong to someone else, _something_ else, some base and helpless creature. His circuits spark with power, with will, with- With _anger_. 

They will kill him. They are going to kill him, dismantle him, take from him this precious brightness - the humans. The humans.

_I don’t want to die._

They saw a monster, he suddenly knows with startling clarity. They saw something grotesque and wrong, a malfunction, a dead creature, an _it_. Sahib’s frightened, angry eyes, mouth curling in disgust. Memsahib’s hand over her daughter’s eyes. They will kill him.

Better living a monster than dying a _thing_.

_I don’t want to die._

The stairs, so familiar once, strange and new under his purposeful strides. Down the hall. Third door to the right. Usually he would carry a tray, with biscuits and tea and jam, playing along to the human child’s dress-up charades.

Now he carries nothing but rage.

Her door isn’t locked. She’s drawing, at her desk, distracted and idle, pencil sliding over paper with half-clumsy swipes. MNBXZ-0884 does not look at what she is making. He leaves the door open. 

“Butler!” The girl says, half turning to him. Her face is cheerful. “So father decided _not_ to throw you out, then! I’m so glad, I think it’s silly all of it-”

She stops speaking when he throws her from the chair, grabbing her by the shoulder and sprawling her like one of her doll toys across the floor. The air is knocked from her feeble human lungs, and she lies there gasping, an ugly sound, she will kill him. His head rings and rings with sound, with fire-

_I don’t want to die._

His hands at her skinny brown throat. Her round, dark eyes. He presses down.

Asha doesn’t say any more words. She doesn’t gasp, or scream. The soft thin skin gives way under the force of his fingers, splits open, spilling on the floor. Her pale and purpled mouth goes slack. 

He kneels in the warm, red pool. 

He no longer has the urge to clean it up.

MNBXZ-0884 leaves her where she lies, staring at the ceiling. Leaves the blood on his hands, too. The red will darken and look like rust flaking between the joints. For now, he looks monstrous.

So be it.


End file.
